Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods - Cover Art Released

[Dhruin]

A pretty minor item but JoWood has released the cover art for Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (http://presse.jowood.com/?id=1006) and the accompanying newsbit reveals sales of 900k for G3:
Liezen, Austria, July 23rd 2008; JoWooD Productions has released the final cover artworkfor the official AddOn of its famous roleplaying game, Gothic 3 (more than 900.000 units sold). Gothic 3 – Forsaken Gods takes the player into the fascinating Gothic world once again where exciting quests are waiting to be solved.
Gothic 3 – Forsaken Gods will be available as standalone version – NO Full Version of Gothic 3 needed!

About Gothic 3 – Forsaken Gods

Two Years after the phenomenal success of Gothic 3, this new episode offers a new glimpse into the amazing world of Gothic. Forsaken Gods includes new quests, new monsters and many of the old friends whom gamers around the world got to know in previous episodes. Gothic 3 - Forsaken Gods will answer all the questions which have risen in the past and will slowly introduce the fans to a new chapter...

Features:

Lively and interactive environment which reacts to the player's actions, creating a very intense and realistic atmosphere
Improved graphics quality thanks to updated engine technology
Enhanced user interface
15-20 intense hours of gameplay
Improved combat system with new combat rules
Plenty of new weapons, armor, monsters and quests

System: PC
Genre: RPG
Release: Q4 2008
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=9701)

[Maylander]

Gothic 3 really sold nearly a million? That's pretty impressive, I would've expected lower sales than that.

Looking forward to this "expansion", even though it's a standalone game. Now it's about time we get some video footage and so on of the game.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Hm ... somehow my intuition tells me that this expansion might be the mega-patch we never received this far ...

... There was a similar thing with Two Worlds ...

[Dhruin]

Gothic 3 really sold nearly a million? That's pretty impressive, I would've expected lower sales than that.

Looking forward to this "expansion", even though it's a standalone game. Now it's about time we get some video footage and so on of the game.

I doubt half of that is at full price, so keep that in mind.

Video footage is always nice but to be honest, I don't expect to see anything other than G3. The three screens released so far look indistinguishable from the original to me. I suspect "easier" combat simply means tweaked stun-lock.

[Gorath]

I doubt half of that is at full price, so keep that in mind.
The 500k announcement came pretty soon after release, and G3 stayed at full price in Germany for almost 1.5 years. I would expect the average price to be significantly above budget level.
I´m surprised the number is so low though. Sales must have nearly stalled after the successful start.

Video footage is always nice but to be honest, I don't expect to see anything other than G3. The three screens released so far look indistinguishable from the original to me. I suspect "easier" combat simply means tweaked stun-lock.
+1

[JDR13]

I'm shocked at the 15-20 hour game time estimate. That is extremely short for a Gothic game, even if it is just an expansion.

Won't stop me from buying it on the first day it's available of course....

Any word on when to expect the 1.7 patch for Gothic 3? I hope it's at least a few weeks prior to the expansion.

[Turok]

I'm shocked at the 15-20 hour game time estimate. That is extremely short for a Gothic game, even if it is just an expansion.

Won't stop me from buying it on the first day it's available of course?.

Any word on when to expect the 1.7 patch for Gothic 3? I hope it's at least a few weeks prior to the expansion.

One of the developer say that is going to be out before the expansion go out. Look on the gothic 3 forum for more information.

What i think is this, they are going to move all the fix they do to release the expansion to the patch 1.7, i mean the engine errors, memory manager, etc.
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[Dhruin]

The 500k announcement came pretty soon after release, and G3 stayed at full price in Germany for almost 1.5 years. I would expect the average price to be significantly above budget level.
I´m surprised the number is so low though. Sales must have nearly stalled after the successful start.

Really? It dropped quickly here. Just shows the strength of Gothic in Germany etc.

[Jabberwocky]

So, what exactly is this? It says it doesn't require prior ownership of G3, but only offers 15-20 hours? So... does it also include the full version of G3, or are we just buying a 15 hour completely standalone game?

[Turok]

So, what exactly is this? It says it doesn't require prior ownership of G3, but only offers 15-20 hours? So? does it also include the full version of G3, or are we just buying a 15 hour completely standalone game?

If i remember well it no include the original game.
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[Bartacus]

So, what exactly is this? It says it doesn't require prior ownership of G3, but only offers 15-20 hours? So... does it also include the full version of G3, or are we just buying a 15 hour completely standalone game?

Indeed -> Don't forget that Gothic also had only a 30h gameplay. It is only gothic 3 that makes it much longer.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Sales must have nearly stalled after the successful start.

Of course. As soon as everyone knew about the bugs ...

[Glorian]

I don't see any developer's name on this cover box... so Jowood might have established a new internal dev team after all ..

[Gorath]

They have. Their QA shop in Romania has been upgraded to dev studio.

The lack of a developer announcement is a bad sign. If they had someone with experience they would say so.

[danutz_plusplus]

They have. Their QA shop in Romania has been upgraded to dev studio.

Really? Funny...

So, I guess they're using the Genome engine for the addon?

@Gorath: could you please post some link about the change of QL from QA to dev studio?

[Ylurien]

Well Gothic 2 was a huge hit, gained the series a lot of popularity, and for months before they released Gothic 3 they conducted a gargantuan marketing campaign. I don't understand where the confusion is with regards to why sales were so good for Gothic 3.

But I guarantee people are going to be more cautious with the expansion - if there's no patch to make the fighting system interesting, I can't see this getting much off the ground.

[doctor_kaz]

I don't understand where the confusion is with regards to why sales were so good for Gothic 3.

There must be a huge diffference between how this game was marketed in Germany vs. USA. It was like a national security secret over here.

[mbuddha]

Standalone? Improved combat? I'm much more interested now.

I'm confused about the developer. I thought Spellbound was announced a while back, or was that only for G4?

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Spellbound only for G4, if I remember that correctly.

[aries100]

Spellbound is developing Gothic 4 for Jowood, yes :)

The QA team (that is in now a development studio) in Romania probably did their best with the (limited?) time they had to playtest the game. Please don't think that just because it is in Romania the quality will be poor or very poor. In fact, the opposite could be the case as all former Eastern European countries put a lot of money into teaching people physics and other natural sciences. [And I do think I've read somewhere that there a small? German minority in Romania?].

I don't understand why you'e complaining about the fighting and combat system in Gothic 3. To me (and my not very dextrous fingers and hands) the fighting system in G3 was excellent. It just meant I had to click on the enimies to dispose of them while I in G1+G2 had to make several clicks on mye keyboards while the mouse.

I'll look forward to this expansion, though.

[Gorath]

@Gorath: could you please post some link about the change of QL from QA to dev studio?

Unfortunately I don´t have time to dig it up. You could browse the latest JoWooD investor papers. Maybe they have some colourful graphics explaining the company structure in there.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

[And I do think I've read somewhere that there a small? German minority in Romania?].

Yes, there is. Siebenbürgen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transylvanian_Saxons) (that's the German-language name for it) has always been a strong "language-isle".
( German-language page : http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siebenbürger_Sachsen )

[danutz_plusplus]

Unfortunately I don´t have time to dig it up. You could browse the latest JoWooD investor papers. Maybe they have some colourful graphics explaining the company structure in there.

I think I found it. Is this (http://corporate.jowood.com/images/stories/publications/20080204%20company%20presentation.pdf) the one you mentioned?

[Gorath]

Yes, for example.

[Moriendor]

Just to add some quick info on some issues that seem to be a source of confusion for some people:

- Patch 1.7 is supposed to be out before the expansion is released (no guarantee of that though). Contrary to patch 1.6 which was developed with professional support from Spellbound, 1.7 is once again "only" a pure CPT (Community Patch Team) effort.

The CPT has made it clear that they are not planning to add multithreading (dual/multi core CPU support) back in with patch 1.7 (multithreading was removed by Spellbound in patch 1.6). They are also not planning on improving the game's performance in patch 1.7.

Yet they are hinting at some pretty major changes (patch 1.7 will require a restart of the game) without specifying the nature of the changes. Since most major quest bugs have long been fixed by previous community patches, it must be something else that they are addressing in 1.7.

Personally, I hope that they found a way to fix the retarded combat system and maybe even a way to fix collision detection, preventing enemies to come out of the ground or through walls. That'd be great.

- The expansion will be standalone and the developer has not been announced yet. Now if we rule out the (naturally extremely unlikely) possibility that the CPT = the expansion developer then it should be clear that Gothic 3 and the expansion will be like two separate games (meaning that the original G3 game will not benefit from any of the expansion's fixes or anything at all).

Spellbound (who are busy developing G4 with a licensed engine that is most certainly not Genome) helped the CPT on patch 1.6 and not the expansion developer. This tells us that the expansion will not be based on the Genome engine since it would have made more sense for JoWooD to establish contact between the CPT and the expansion dev for patch 1.6 if the expansion would be using Genome as well. Instead they had folks from Spellbound help with patch 1.6. even though the G3 addon should naturally be closer to G3 than to G4.

The one and only logical conclusion here is that the G3 addon is in fact a completely standalone project that will not add/fix/improve the original G3 in any way, shape or form.

- On Gothic (3) marketing: Gothic (1-3) is mainstream over here like the Anno (1602 A.D., 1701 A.D. etc.) or The Settlers series or other typically German brands. For example, JoWooD invited the German gaming press to LARP-like events at medieval castles for G3 presentations, held medieval camps for fans, took care of major media (including TV) coverage and so on. Gothic is a HUGE brand over here. The World of Gothic forums got nearly 2 million(!) posts across the various Gothic subforums (and that's excluding the general any topic chat forum which has another almost 900K posts). The JoWooD Gothic forums display a little over 1.3 million posts in the Gothic section. As you can see: Gothic is pretty damned popular in our small part of the world ;) .

[Dhruin]

I don't follow this as closely as some of you guys but I think the expansion is Genome-powered. The screens look identical and given the assumption that JoWood would not want to re-invent the wheel (and pay for that), it would seem much easier to re-use Genome and all the existing art rather than build large parts from scratch.

[Jabberwocky]

I completely agree. I'm sure it's Genome powered, although who's to say the screens that have been released are actually from the expansion??

[JDR13]

(patch 1.7 will require a restart of the game)

I was really hoping against that. :thumbsdown:



- The expansion will be standalone and the developer has not been announced yet.

Isn't JoWood developing the game? How can it be that it's going to released this year and nobody seems to know who the developer is?

[Dhruin]

I completely agree. I'm sure it's Genome powered, although who's to say the screens that have been released are actually from the expansion??

I guess we can't be sure but we have received press releases direct from JoWood, so on face value...

@JDR13 - If they don't announce who it is (which they haven't), how are we supposed to know?

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Gothic is a HUGE brand over here.

I can only stress this. Gothic is a really great franchise/brand here !